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The 2013 Movie Anticipatometer

Last year I invented the Anticipatometer, a method of anticipation-measuring that involves a third-party shouting various movie titles at me while I bounce on a trampoline. A fourth-party then measures the seismic readings of my “leaps for joy”, then feeds that data to a physician who adjusts the measurements according to my size, weight and body mass index. The properties are then ranked accordingly.

Looking back on the 2012 results, there were some instances where my anticipatory leaps became mournful hops of regret (Prometheus, American Reunion) and others where I continued to leap for joy upon exiting the cinema (The Avengers, Django Unchained). The rest were pretty good and were worth the wait – except maybe GI Joe (I quite enjoyed it, but the wait outweighed its merits).

What’s interesting is that only one movie from the list (The Avengers) made it into my 2012 Top Ten at the end of the year (although Django would have made it had it not been released here in January). This could indicate that sometimes too much hype can kill a movie or that there were a lot of surprises in 2012 or just that the movies I get excited about are rarely the best ones.

Here are the ten movies I’m most leaping for throughout the rest of 2013 (could not for the life of me find a still for Gravity):

Well it’s rare that a film overcomes The Rule of Sequels, in which x>y, where x = the original, y = the sequel. In general the sequels that tend to be better have a third or fourth fixed constant. E.g. x<yzs where z= darker and s=moodier. Star Trek has the word Darkness in the title, so they're clearly showing their cards already. Having read the book of Catching Fire, it's even more depressing than the first one, so it's looking likely people will consider this better. Three cheers for misery!

He is certainly phenomenal. Scott Pilgrim was my favourite movie of the year that movie came out (google too far away, I’m thinking 2010). Ant Man will be tricky, but at the very least, I’m sure he’ll do something interesting with it.